“We are disguising this round of seed funding as a grant, accomplishing all of the below:
1) brand-washing for people who don’t do the math
2) avoiding angering our LPs and/or violating our fund theses and
3) getting in on the ground floor of things that might follow OpenAI through the non-profit-to-VC-darling door
Thanks for reading our press release, feel free to try to apply using your personal network (somehow) because we don’t care as we’ve already landed our positions.”
This is insurance for their already huge investments (and future rounds) in AI businesses. It's a pittance relative to everything else they have at risk. It's prudent since failure of small projects like these can delay work on profitable corporate efforts.
They state the nature of their support in very clear terms:
"We’ll support a small group of open source developers through grant funding (not an investment or SAFE note), giving them the opportunity to continue their work without the pressure to generate financial returns."
Some of the recipients of financial support have described the nature of the agreement as well.
> a16z didn't ask for any equity or any kind of quid pro quo, other than to let folks know that they provided this grant.
You could choose to interpret it as marketing spend or "buying relationships", sure. For me, there's enough negativity in the world - I don't want to spend time imagining more.
And why would I? A16Z have already explicitly stated their intent: "a thriving open source ecosystem is essential to building [ai's] future" and "We’ll support a small group of open source developers through grant funding (not an investment or SAFE note), giving them the opportunity to continue their work without the pressure to generate financial returns."
There's not a lot of spin on this. They want to be a leader in AI so they're investing in the people who build the tools that they use in pursuit of their commercial goals.
1) brand-washing for people who don’t do the math
2) avoiding angering our LPs and/or violating our fund theses and
3) getting in on the ground floor of things that might follow OpenAI through the non-profit-to-VC-darling door
Thanks for reading our press release, feel free to try to apply using your personal network (somehow) because we don’t care as we’ve already landed our positions.”